The Rizzo/Roher Wedding Page

THE WEDDING DETAILS

The Ceremony

We had an 11am service at Bethel United Methodist Church in Woodbridge, VA, close to where Karen was living in Lake Ridge.

The rehearsal went very well with the exception of the ring bearer taking a spill outside the church and getting a big shiner on his forehead. He practiced walking down the aisle while holding an ice pack on his head. You could barely tell the next day and he looked as cute as ever, in his tiny tux.

We ate very good food at the rehearsal dinner but it took a long time to arrive. We had a little excitement when one of the guests passed out after eating (two others felt dizzy). We had an ambulance (fire truck and police car too) arrive and rush him to the hospital, but thank goodness, he was fine the next morning. This totally refocused Paul and my perspective on what was really important in life and all of our nerves for the next day vanished. The details didn't seem to matter any more.

The service was about an hour long and it went pretty smoothly. It must have been nerves that caused Paul to blurt out "I will" before the minister was done asking him the 'intent of marriage' question. It turned out to be a very humorous and memorable moment. Paul was embarrassed but Karen was flattered at his eagerness to get married. Not to be left out, Reverend Fred Parish gave Karen a hard time about how detailed her preparations were for the wedding, of which she was embarrassed. That was funny too. The Reverend gave a wonderful sermon on love and how we should always express it to those who are close to us.

Karen's brother, Wayne, and two of Paul's brothers, Rick and David, did great jobs as ushers for the ceremony. Four songs were sung beautifully by our soloist, Jerry Haggin; two before the ceremony and two during. The Bethel United church organist, Jan Womer, played without error for the ceremony. Pete Stoebe and Tom Joplin, both great friends of Karen and Paul's, read passages of Scripture from the Bible. Tommy read two passages from Ephesians and Pete read from Colossians and I John. Click here to see the text of the wedding program. We will display the actual program once we get a scanner.

The Reception

We had the reception at the Sea Sea & Co. Restaurant in Occoquan, from noon until 5, and it went exceptionally well! It's a beautiful location right on the Occoquan River. We got there later than we wanted, due to the longer-than-expected ceremony and picture-taking delays, but we had a great time and everything looked and tasted wonderful! The upstairs reception hall, with it's many large windows, was very well lit, even from a partly cloudy afternoon. Sitting at the head table with our backs to those windows, we knew exactly when the sun was out because of the heat, but I was grateful that it wasn't raining. The final count was 98 guests, including the Bridal party. It was truly wonderful to see everyone. We wish we could have spent more time with each of you.

Our first dance song was The Gift (words), a duet by Collin Raye and Susan Ashton. The bubbles that were set out at each place setting were a big hit. Kids of *ALL* ages were having fun blowing bubbles! We have cute pictures of children pretending to smoke the chocolate cigars. The cigars and matches were given to all the men attending the reception. Luckily, no one tried to light up. The women took home potted violets, which were also the table centerpieces. The biggest hit turned out to be the trivia sheet. Paul and I compiled 20 questions and 18 "true or false" about ourselves and asked the guests to try to answer them. We had the DJ pass these out to our guests while we were getting our pictures taken and we answered them later in the afternoon. The trivia sheet can be viewed with or without answers.

We rented the church's reception hall to host an informal gathering after the wedding reception and opened presents. It ran from 7 to 9 and was attended mainly by the two families, but it was open to everyone. Including eight friends, we numbered about 25. The gifts were absolutely wonderful and we want to thank everyone for being SO generous and thoughtful! You will soon be able to click here to see pictures from this gathering.

The Wedding Party

Best Man:���������������O. Paul Thamasett (Lake Ridge, VA)
Matron of Honor:����Jean DiMercurio (Hagerstown, MD)
Junior Bridesmaid:���Erica DiMercurio (Hagerstown, MD)
Flower Girl:�������������Kristen DiMercurio (Hagerstown, MD)
Ring Bearer:������������Eric Roher (Columbia, MD)

The Colors

We decided on a deep violet for the Matron of Honor and Junior Bridesmaid and lavender for the flowergirl. Karen wore a beautiful sleeveless, white dress. Karen purchased her dress on May 17th at David's. The other dresses were handmade by Norma Roher, Karen's Mom. The groom wore a black tuxedo with tails, a white vest and bowtie. The best man's tuxedo was black with a black vest with purple accents.

Karen booked Accolades Florist of Occoquan to do the flowers. We were extremely pleased with the service provided by Lisa. We picked out pink roses, purple stattice, lavender minicarnations, white freesia, and ivy for the girls. Karen's bouquet was mostly white, with two big white lilies and a lot of white roses, but had color accents of purple statis, lavendar fressia, pink sweatheart roses, and ivy. The flowergirl dropped pink and white rose petals from a basket. Paul wore a white rose on his lapel and the Best Man, bride's father and ringbearer, wore pink (despite protests from the Best Man). All other floral arrangements were made up of similar colors and flowers. They were absolutely gorgeous.

The Cake

We had a GREAT cake! Norman from The Sweet Life made it for us. It was a combination of one orange chiffon layer on top of a chocolate layer and frosted in white icing. Everybody loved it! It was like Grand Marnier. The outside was decorated with beautiful icing flowers in the colors of the wedding and we found a cute bride and groom cake topper from J.C. Penney's. Norman was recommended by several friends in the area and he did not disappoint! I loved our cake. The top layer was a spice cake that Paul chose during the taste test. We intended on freezing it for a year and having it on our 1 year anniversary, but we couldn't wait and ate some that very night! We'll have Norman bake us a fresh one for our anniversary.

The invitations and thank you cards were ordered from Wedding Traditions. The invitation enclosures featured two maps of the area that we printed ourselves. Click here to see the style of our invitation.

The Disc Jockey

Our Disk Jockey was Ted Sobotka, who works for MBI Entertainment. Ted was excellent. He really kept the 'show' going so that Paul and I didn't have to think about a thing. We loved the bubble machine he brought and we really enjoyed his voice and sense of humor. Cool guy.

The Photographers

Instead of having a professional photographer, we asked three of our shutterbug friends to take pictures for us. We know some pretty talented people by the names of Matt Harper, Lance Gwennap, and Jules Hamu. We thought having more than one photographer would take the pressure off of having just one. They choreographed their flashes and came out with wonderful photographs that will help us to remember our wedding day for a life time. These three guys get huge kudos from us, for all the running around they did and their beautiful work. Thank you. Here are their photos.

Richard Ash, of Herndon, was our videographer for the ceremony and reception. We got his name through our friend Pete Stoebe. We were planning on only recording the ceremony but he gave us a fabulous price and we decided to record the entire day (thank you Pete). We got the video back in late winter. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad and it covered what we wanted.

We got some very good pictures back from the disposable cameras placed on the reception tables. It really added to the recording of the day. Now I can see what really happened! Some of them are pretty funny. Paul and I kept saying, 'I don't remember seeing this happen.'

The Accomodations

After the second reception ended and was all cleaned up, and we had stopped back at the reception hall to pick up a missing cake plate, we drove back to Karen's to drop some things off. This was around 11:30 PM. Somehow we missed dinner and were still hungry, so we then attacked the top layer of the wedding cake and had leftovers from the rehearsal dinner that got brought home. So much for saving the cake until our anniversary. We relaxed a bit and opened the wedding cards. Eventually, we made it to the hotel around 12:30AM. In case you were wondering, we spent the wedding night at the Days Inn-Potomac Mills, the same hotel that Paul's family and our friends stayed. We got there late enough where no one spotted us. Everything finally caught up with us and we crashed. The next morning we surprised Paul's family, waiting in the lobby and joined them for brunch. It was another gorgeous day and a great way to start our marriage, with family.

The Honeymoon

We wanted something with romance, a little nightlife, some nice sites to visit, but also a place where we could get away from it all and put our feet up for a week. With those factors in mind, we focused on tropical islands. Thanks to Karen's surfing of the web and searching the newpaper, we found a package deal to St. Maarten that had all that we wanted. It was for seven days/six nights, included airfare, a two-day car rental, and an ocean-view room at the Great Bay Beach Hotel and Casino in Philipsburg, St. Maarten. Sint Maarten/St. Martin is half Dutch and half French, which we thought was pretty neat. Paul wrote up a synopsis of our honeymoon.

The Engagement Ring

Karen found a setting she liked in a jewelry store and had a goldsmith cast a mold to look just like it. There were some difficulties in getting the mold to look like the other one, but after several attempts with a patient goldsmith, the setting looks great (photo here). The goldsmith can't reproduce the setting exactly due to copyright laws.

The setting consists of .12 and .17 bezel-set diamonds on each side of a round, 1 carat center diamond. The small diamonds are set in white gold and the band is in yellow gold.

We purchased the ring at Direct Jewelry Outlet in Falls Church, VA.

The Wedding Bands

We purchased the wedding rings at Direct Jewelry Outlet, also. We ended up buying the first pair we ever picked out, three months prior. We thought we wanted to shop around more and see what else was 'out there,' so we didn't get them right away. Funny how if we had only listened to ourselvess and trusted our first impressions, we could have saved a lot of time.

They are matching rings and look like three bands all in a row. The outer bands are white gold and the middle band is yellow gold. The middle band is wider than the outer two, but you can barely tell on Karen's ring because hers is so small. They were engraved with "United in God's Love 8/29/98."

We were registered at Linens N Things, Service Merchandise, and a Pfaltzgraff outlet store.

We picked out a Laura Ashley pattern for the Master bedroom called Bramble and our informal dish pattern is called April. We love them both. Thanks go out to Zoe Gwennap for offering to purchase and wrap gifts for out-of-town gift-givers.

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